We were on our way to Locale Italian restaurant at the surf club end of the fabled tourist strip, and I was dodging strollers while musing about Noosa’s fine restaurants of the past. Sweet memories of Berardo’s yellowfin tuna ceviche and spanner crab tortellini flooded back.

It was the burnt end of the Christmas holiday season and there was a mood of decadent ennui, with the sunburnt mothers looking like they needed a holiday to recover from their holiday. A fancy baby carriage – to call it a stroller would be to call a Lamborghini a Honda Civic – was parked beside the blue Vespa that signals the entrance to Locale.

The Blonde and I had arrived on spec. Grown-ups’ dinner time was all booked up, so we had to settle for the early sitting. This is risky. The most sumptuous plates of food can taste like ashes in the company of squirming, grizzling rugrats. And, shock! Horror! We were seated next to a long table with five of them. However they were as quiet as church mice, their eyes hardly deviating from their iPads. Such sensible parenting, I thought.

Locale is moody, with black interiors and hip clusters of flowers on the bar. But you can’t eat the decorations. The menu is smart Italian that promised a lot and delivered a lot. The food was of a uniformly high standard. We started with a Fraser Island spanner crab risotto ($29) with lemon and sea urchin butter. It had been enlivened with a sprinkling of delicately salted bottarga, a cured fish roe.

Sensibly, you may order some plates in entree or main-course size with prices adjusted accordingly. Then there was free-range Gympie pork belly ($39) and Darling Downs Black Angus ($43) but we stuck to a maritime theme, sharing the Coral Coast barramundi ($39) laced with a parsley puree and sitting on a pool of smoked tomato gel and almond “milk”. It came adorned with a lovely zucchini flower stuffed with a scallop mousseline.

What came next was even better. The fazzoletti “handkerchief” pasta blackened with squid ink ($28) resembled a seaweed-seafood medley. It’s hard to make these kind of dishes look elegant on the plate. However, the Locale kitchen presented an attractive assembly. And it was clever cooking with an abundance of flavours from the Mooloolaba king prawns, the crab, the mussels and the calamari singing in harmony with a rich garlic butter and lemon sauce with a pistachio crunch.

We also tasted the grass-fed veal ($42) with charred leeks and spinach and sage. It was another hit.

There was an air of calm professionalism throughout the busy restaurant and the long and delightfully idiosyncratic wine list featured Italian, Australian and New Zealand (and some French) treasures. It was replete with helpful tasting notes and descriptions of the wine regions of Italy that made me want to go there. You may also choose from five editions of Henschke Hill of Grace ($1100-1290) and other blockbusters, or settle for wine by the glass.

I was in the mood for a Super Tuscan and the sommelier recommended a glass of Le Macchiole 2015 Bolgheri Rosso ($14), an agreeable blend of merlot, cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon and shiraz.

There were Italian treats, too, in the dessert list with affogato, buttermilk ricotta doughnuts with zabaglione, a caramelised lemon tart with strawberries and cream, meringues and gelati and sorbet. However, we went for the milk chocolate panna cotta ($18) with macadamia nougat, raspberry sorbet and a swirl of vanilla-flavoured Persian fairy floss. It was served in a glass and looked as good as it tasted.

There was much to admire at Locale. In a frequently overrated resort town where many restaurants lack that flash of culinary genius, Locale succeeds.

This review originally appeared on couriermail.com.au.